Singh’s Case Puts Shortcomings of Tour’s Antidoping Program at Forefront

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — On the 11th tee box at Riviera Country Club, Vijay Singh was waiting to hit Friday when a spectator shouted, “Deer hunter!”

The cry drew titters among the few fans in the gallery who understood the reference. Singh said last month that he had used deer antler spray, which contains insulinlike growth factor-1, or IGF-1, a muscle-building hormone banned by the PGA Tour.

Singh has unwittingly put the tour’s antidoping program, which has been in place for five years, under the magnifying glass, exposing its flaws. Some performance-enhancing drugs like IGF-1 can be detected only through blood testing, which is not included in the tour’s program. And players are randomly selected to supply urine samples during tournaments, leaving a window for using banned substances for muscle repair and healing injuries during their time off.

“I’m worried about living my life every day,” said Brandt Jobe, 47, who is playing on a major medical exemption. “To get healthy, you have to do whatever you have to do to live your life. After that you have to consider, ‘If I’m going to go back and play golf on the PGA Tour, can I take these things?’ ”

There is also the question of what will happen in 2016 when golf becomes part of the Olympics, whose prospective participants are subject to regular testing outside competition.

Another question: What will happen if Singh plays on the Champions Tour, the PGA Tour circuit for players 50 and older, which has no drug testing? Ty Votaw, a PGA Tour spokesman, said any penalties Singh might receive would be upheld on the senior circuit.

The tour’s antidoping manual states that a player who admits using a banned substance faces the same consequences as someone who fails a drug test: up to a year’s suspension and a fine up to $500,000. But what if the product that was used by Singh, a three-time major champion and member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, is found not to contain IGF-1?

“I don’t think there’s any room for gray in whether he’s guilty or not,” said Geoff Ogilvy, the 2006 United States Open champion and a seven-time tour winner who was paired with Singh for the first two rounds here. “I think the gray area is the punishment.”

What if Singh, whose rigorous workout regimen has been lauded by Tiger Woods, another fitness fanatic, is able to prove the product he used did not contain IGF-1 or produces doctors who will testify that taking it orally does not provide any benefit because it must be injected to be effective? What if Singh ends up with no punishment?

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Vijay Singh at the Riviera Country Club on Thursday. Singh said last month that he had used deer antler spray, which contains insulinlike growth factor-1, or IGF-1, a muscle-building hormone banned by the PGA Tour.CreditDanny Moloshok/Reuters

“I don’t think that would be good,” Ogilvy said. “Because a lot of the reason you have an antidoping policy is for the public perception. I assume it’s obviously to catch people that are doing stuff they shouldn’t do, but it’s as much to maintain the image of your sport, I think. You’ve got someone who’s admitted to being guilty and not getting sanctioned; that kind of undermines the point of the whole thing.”

Since the antidoping program was instituted in 2008, only one player has been caught. In 2009, the journeyman Doug Barron tested positive for exogenous testosterone and the beta blocker propranolol, both of which he was taking under a doctor’s supervision. His one-year suspension was lifted after the tour granted him a therapeutic exemption.

Commissioner Tim Finchem has said he does not think a competitive advantage can be gained in golf by using performance-enhancing drugs, a belief that was echoed last week by Sergio García, an eight-time tour winner.

“It’s not the kind of sport that needs much when it comes to enhancing drugs or whatever you want to call it, performance-enhancing drugs,” García said, adding: “We started testing — what was it? — 2008, I think, and nothing has really come around. So I think that speaks for itself.”

Linn Goldberg, a sports medicine doctor and researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, noted that golfers, like other athletes, lift weights and adhere to off-course conditioning regimens. “What are they working out for?” he said in a telephone interview. “To get weaker?”

Goldberg added: “People used to say that of baseball players, that it wasn’t going to help you hit if you took performance-enhancing drugs, that you’d just bulk up. Is the skill set for hitting a golf ball that different from hitting a baseball?”

Matt Every, a two-time runner-up on the tour last year, said he did not believe doping was a problem in golf, but he wondered why the players were not subjected to blood tests, which can detect human growth hormone and other sophisticated doping.

“That is what we should be testing for out here,” Every said. “That is what gives people an advantage out here. And if there isn’t a test for it, then I don’t even know why we’re testing out here.”

He added: “I think they’ll probably look at it and maybe change it a little bit here coming up. Hopefully, they will. I think they should.”

Athletes in Olympic sports have blood testing and out-of-competition testing, and Votaw said that in 2016, golfers on the tour who are identified by their countries as potential Olympic participants will be educated on the process. “We’re confident we have a vigorous testing program,” Votaw said.

People in other sports like swimming, cycling, baseball and track and field also expressed confidence that their athletes were clean until it became painfully clear that they were not.

“If you take a look at other sports, if you go back in time, they all say the same thing, that doping would never help,” Goldberg said. “It’s very curious.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP7 of the New York edition with the headline: Singh’s Case Puts Shortcomings of Tour’s Antidoping Program at Forefront. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe